I got too used to the convenience of a laptop this year, and while I don't want to give up my desktop, I've started looking for good deals on laptops. Ultrabooks are nice, but they're way too expensive. My price range is more the $400 one, and I'm ok with a laptop that's bulky and heavy.

The laptop would be primarily for mainstream use: surfing the 'net, Word/Excel, watching movies, maybe the occasional game (like audiosurf, or equally casual ones; powerful graphics are nice, but I'm not willing to spend more for it). I'd also want to hook up the laptop to an external TV or monitor. I figure any current laptop can handle these tasks, but I'm concerned with the nominal screen resolution and the touchpad/keyboard.

So far the laptops I've seen in this price range have 15" screens with resolutions equitable to my old netbooks. In order to be productive I think 15" is a happy medium, as 13" starts feeling cramped, and anything larger is luxury on a laptop, but the resolutions I'm seeing are pretty sparse. Is this it, or is there a diamond in the rough that has a denser screen? For input, I know that I'm not a fan of Sony's weird textured touchpads (Apple's touchpads are the best, but not for 3x the price), and I much prefer scalloped keys to flat ones.

Am I chasing something that doesn't exist in the $400 price range, or can I get reasonably close?

I scored a refurb Lenovo Edge 420 laptop on Newegg a couple of months back for $400. i5 CPU Sandy Bridge, 4gb of RAM, 500gb hard drive. Well built, battery life is great. You can definitely get a nice powerful refurb laptop for $400.

I like ASUS myself. From my experience they offer better build quality than the OEMS like Dell and HP for a better price given the same components list. I think to hit $400 with something that's not completely obsolete or underpowered, you're going to have to look at refurbished laptops.

Like you said, you'll be hard pressed to find a laptop with 1080 resolution in this price range. Let's face it, the majority of laptops today are unfortunately still 1366x768. You can combat this by getting a 14" screen which obviously increases pixel density without making the laptop noticeably smaller, but your selection of laptops becomes smaller as 15.6" is the most common size. You pay a premium to step up to 1080 resolution whether you like it or not, so the $400 budget is going to have to loosen up if that's what you're looking for.

Newegg has eighteen listings for sub-$500 6-lb notebooks with 17.3" 1600x900 displays. Eleven of those are under $450. Six refurbished models are under $400, including an HP Pavilion g7-1316dx for $390, delivered.